Broadcast E-mail Guidelines
At present, arguably the greatest influence on a message’s effectiveness
is its resemblance – or lack of resemblance – to unsolicited
and unwanted e-mail, or spam. E-mail from University departments to
members of the community is understood not to be spam. However, it
is important to realize that most e-mail users have a heightened sensitivity
due to the volume of spam that they receive. This potential “guilt
by association” with spam can result in legitimate e-mail being
ignored, regardless of its origin. This section contains information
to help senders manage audience selection, message format, and frequency
of mailings in order to avoid their messages having the appearance
of spam.
Appropriateness
Delivery choice
Two questions about message delivery should be answered before electing
to send a large electronic mailing: (1) is e-mail the best way to
communicate the given information (see Alternatives
to E-mail) and, if it is, (2) which of the delivery channels
– available institutional tools or local distribution list
– is best suited to the task?
Originating
address
An unfamiliar “From” address triggers an immediate
suspicion among many users that a message may be spam. To avoid
this, we recommend specifying an easily recognized name, e.g., a
department name, as the originator of a message instead of a valid
but obscure BU e-mail address. For example, it is preferable to
send a message that reads “From: Department of XYZ” rather than
“From: obscure-user@bu.edu.” It is possible to specify an alias
by using the syntax in the following example (quotes and angle brackets
are required):
“Department
of XYZ” <validaddress@bu.edu>
This associates
the alias “Department of XYZ” with an actual e-mail address, in
this case validaddress@bu.edu.
Target audience
Selecting an appropriate audience to receive particular information
is an important part of insuring a message’s effectiveness,
so care should be taken to identify a collection of recipients that
is neither too narrow, in which case some who should be receiving
that information are excluded, nor too broad, which can result in
the perception among those erroneously included that the message
is irrelevant or, worse, annoying.
Frequency
If an audience perceives that it is receiving unsolicited messages
too often from a particular source, the effectiveness of those messages
may be reduced. In general, frequency of mailings should be determined
by the messages’ relevance and importance to the recipients.
Alerts or warnings, for example, would merit higher frequency messages
than would notices of a more general nature.
Message Form
Message brevity
E-mail messages should be no more than a few reasonably short paragraphs
in length. Concise messages are typically much more effective than
long notes that contain a lot of detail. When it is necessary to
communicate a large amount of information, send a brief message
that includes the main point(s) and a reference to a Web page that
contains the bulk of the detail. This is preferable to a multi-page
e-mail and, because Web pages allow the use of graphics and formatted
text, information presentation is potentially simpler and more powerful.
Inclusion of Web page addresses (URLs)
Specify no more than one or two URLs. If an e-mail message refers
to information on more than one Web page, best practice is to specify
a single, top-level URL in the message. The page referred to can
in turn point to the other pages, as required. This simplifies navigation
for the message recipient and makes it easier for them to refer
back to the Web information later.
A short URL is preferable to a long one. While most e-mail programs
recognize a URL as a link to a Web page, some have difficulty handling
long addresses that span more than one message line. This forces
some recipients to cut and paste the page address into their Internet
browser, a sometimes tedious process.
If a Web reference is to be included in a message, the preferred
form of the address includes “http://” or “https://”.
This is suggested because not all e-mail programs recognize addresses
that do not contain “http://” as Web addresses. Adding
the HTTP prefix insures that most e-mail programs will correctly
interpret the address. For example, use http://www.bu.edu/eng instead
of www.bu.edu/eng
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